Whiny babies of Scamworld

Scamworld whiners all seem to operate by a common motto: "You've made your bed, now lie about it."

Hello, and welcome to August. Despite being nearly overcome by my normal summer doldrums (I do not much like summer), my aim is to be a little less lazy this month, Whirled-wise anyway, than I was in July. Let's start out the month by raising a glass to some of the whiniest babies of Scamworld.

Everybody cries, but some crybabies cry louder and longer
I've actually written quite a bit about whiners over the years -- not only in Scamworld but also in the increasingly related field of American politix. Some of the most notorious whiners, like conspiranoid right-wingers Alex Jones and Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, often manage to blend their personal Scamworld whines with political whining. (Here is a link to a specific post in which I reviewed some of the raspy whines of both Jones and Adams, as well as those of one of this blog's least favorite whiners, fake doctor and viciously daft little hater-man Leonard Coldwell.)

And then of course there is the Whiner-in-Chief, who has bungled careers in both politix and Scamworld, #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump. (Don Jr. is quite the whiner too.)

It's really not much of an exaggeration to state that whining has become nearly as popular a marketing strategy in Scamworld as has boasting. Sometimes there's a fine line to walk: on the one hand, holding oneself up as a model of "success" -- by flaunting material wealth and bragging about "perfect" relationships -- is pretty much essential to sucking in new customers and retaining existing ones. But on the other hand, relating dramatic stories about being "hard done by" is irresistible, especially when one's wealth or even freedom is at stake: for instance, the authorities are breathing down one's back, or one is involved in a personal crisis such as an acrimonious divorce, or one simply can't seem to make a go of reviving a crumbling scampire and needs someone or something else to blame.

Let's take a look at what some of the most notorious Scamworld whiners have been up to lately. None of these individuals is new to this blog.

Kevin Trudeau: the serial scammer that "they" have been working so hard to silence
For a few months, imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, was being quite the chatterbox, via proxies, on his "official" Facebook fan page. For a while he was having those enablers post COVID-19 "updates" every few days. The COVID posts reiterated misinformation and conspiracy theories that are pretty much all over the Internet, though Katie insisted that he is one of the very few sources of this valuable information, which of course you can't find anywhere else because "they" don't want you to know it.

But then, suddenly... radio silence. The COVID updates and other bits of Katie wisdom ceased, and there were few "FROM KEVIN" messages on the Facebook page. The reason for the silence? Anyone's guess, though Trudeau had made mention of increased lockdowns, due to COVID-19, at his facility (FPC Montgomery, Alabama), which would further limit his already limited access to email. In lieu of "FROM KEVIN" missives, the admins simply wrote posts inviting fans to share pro-Kevin stories on the page, and to write to Kevin himself, explaining how he had made their lives better. The admins also posted an endorsement of the COVID conspiracy-porn crockumentary, "Plandemic," saying that even though he most likely hadn't seen the vid, Kevin would probably like it because it resonated so well with his teachings and preachings.

Finally in late July, there was another message "directly" from Kevin, thanking his fans for the "literally thousands of letters, cards and messages I have gotten over the last few weeks." Following that was a list of links that Kevin suggested his worshipers read in order to better understand "how I am doing and how I can handle such injustice and adversity."

One item on that list really stood out for me:

4.) Read my "Missing Messages" by clicking here. These are very powerful messages I wrote to be posted on Facebook but were "censored" and deleted! We found them. Read them and you will see what "They" did not want you to read. https://kevintrudeau.com/lost-prison-messages/

I made one comment on the thread:

Those "missing messages" that were supposedly "censored" by Facebook say pretty much the same things that he said in dozens and dozens of other messages that were not "censored," so if they disappeared I'd say that it was either a Facebook glitch or bungling by previous admins of Kevin's various pages.

As is the case with most of my comments on that page, the response was underwhelming, which is to say that the comment has been totally ignored. Which is hardly surprising, since Katie's fans vastly prefer the censorship narrative. They shy away from Occam's razor, for fear that it will slice their KT illusions to ribbons.

On this Whirled I had been snarkily documenting Kevin's jailhouse messages since way back when he was being held at Chicago's notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). I first wrote about the matter in November 2013. And then there's this December 2013 post about a jailhouse McMiracle. "Censored" or not, Kevin's prison messages have, as I noted in my Facebook comment, all been pretty much the same. The content is redundant, and the explicit or implicit purpose is always to promote present scams or to lay the groundwork for new or revived ones upon his release. And it's all a crock. (I even wrote some lyrics about how crocky it all is.)

You may argue that because Kevin's dispatches from the cage have been, at least on the surface, chiefly about empowerment and enlightenment and making the most of a bad situation, he is anything but a whiner. But you would be wrong, and just a little bit of research might reveal the fact that he is quite the whiny baby when he thinks it will help him get his way. He has whined repeatedly over the years, and sometimes has actually shed real crocodile tears, to various judges, government agencies, and other authorities in his desperate attempts to avoid paying fines, to keep from being charged/convicted/incarcerated, to have his conviction overturned and/or his sentence commuted, and so on and so forth. Not to mention that he has very successfully marketed himself for many years as a hero/martyr for the First Amendment and free speech.

Even from prison, Trudeau has consistently been on-message about being "censored" and "silenced." This latest Facebook post, with its mention of "injustice and adversity" and of "missing messages" that he claims were Facebook-censored, is at best a very thinly disguised whine. So yes, Kevin Trudeau definitely qualifies as a whiner.

Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale (and his paramour): dealing with the "divorce from hell"
Over the years I've written a lot about Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale, selfish-help huckster, McSpirituality guru, and star of The Secret. In July of last year I wrote a two-parter about his divorce from the former love of his life, Nerissa Oden (here's the link to Part 1). Normally I don't really delve into my subjects' personal lives, but I made an exception in this case because, as I explained in the prelude to Part 1, Joe and his paramour, New-Wage dilettante Lisa Winston, have been...

...clearly exploiting their personal relationship as a public marketing tool, while holding themselves forth as motivational and spiritual leaders -- and by extension, as examples to be followed. But as we've discussed on these pages numerous time, it's always a smart idea to look beyond the carefully crafted, love-and-lightwashed narratives -- personal or otherwise -- of hucksters who are trying to sell you something.

So there.

Over a year later, and well over a year and a half since (as documented on public record) Joe first filed for divorce, it's not over. And increasingly, both Joe and Lisa have been whining on social media about "the divorce from hell."

To my knowledge, Joe himself first started publicly whining in earnest about the matter in late 2019, though he had been whining in general about abuse and trauma and whatnot for months before that. But in November of 2019, his friend Mark Joyner posted a Facebook vid of a conversation between Mark and Joe. Mark described it as a "stunningly candid and heartfelt conversation," and Joe called it a "brutally honest interview." It was about as "candid and heartfelt" -- and as "honest" -- as you would expect from seasoned hucksters. Here is a direct link to the Facebook video. But I warn you that if you watch it, that's time that you'll never get back. I watched it so you don't have to.


In a nutshell, so to speak, the conversation was more than an hour and a half of Joe and Mark (figuratively) stroking each other off. In the process they managed to convey a common form of selfish-help elitism and condescension that centered around presenting themselves as uniquely knowledgeable on things of which "the public" is for the most part totally ignorant. Much of the video was about the infamous New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, and what a brilliant example of genius marketing it was and is.

But then Joe got into some personal stuff, and that's where the whining came in.

Slightly past the 58:00 mark, he began a narrative of the personal dramas and traumas he had been through over the past year. He mentioned his father's death and his youngest brother's suicide attempt and the death of his "best friend" -- whom he subsequently revealed to be Michael Abedin, publisher of the New-Wage/McSpirituality glossy rag Austin All Natural. Understand that I am not making light of the grief of losing a parent or a dear friend, or nearly losing a sibling. I don't consider talking about that to be whining. Not at all.

The whiny part began when Joe started griping about his pending divorce. Chokingly he lamented that the divorce should have been easy and effortless because "I wasn't resisting anything, I was pretty much giving away the farm." But instead of being easy and effortless, he said, it has been "nasty, an emotional drain, expensive," and his ex has been "causing a ruckus." He acknowledged she is most likely suffering her own trauma, but it is "kind of breaking her and making her unreasonable."

[Fun fact: Public records indicate that Joe's lawyer for the split is Austin family law attorney Michael Burnett, who has also been one of the aforementioned Alex Jones' lawyers, helping Jones not with a divorce but rather with his ongoing legal battles over the loathsome things that Jones has said about the Sandy Hook massacre. He may not be representing Jones any more; I cannot find current info on that. But he was on Jones' legal team for a while, anyway. Make of that what you will. But I digress.]

Joe told Mark that he still had to travel and be inspirational while all of the traumatic and abusive events were going on. What helped him most, and helped him survive, he said, was stoicism, as taught by Marcus Aurelius. He told Mark that he'd decided that what the world needs now is a blend of positive thinking and stoicism, e.g., "The Secret Stoic," "The Happy Stoic," etc. Mark of course loved the idea, and you could just hear those old marketing wheels turning yet again.

But then Joe got back into the personal stuff again a little while later (starting about 1:18:29). He described how his "old partner" (that would be Nerissa, who was not just an "old partner" but still an actual WIFE) had "crashed" his father's funeral in order to "have an encounter" with Joe. Crashed? I didn't know that funerals were invitation only, and I do recall from reading her public Facebook feed that Nerissa had on numerous occasions expressed her love and respect for her father-in-law; I'm thinking that maybe that's why she traveled from Texas to Ohio to pay her final respects. But Joe said she "crashed" the funeral, and he indicated that it was done solely in order to cause trouble for him.

Mark expressed shock and sympathy, and shortly thereafter asked if the intended confrontation actually took place. Joe says that yes, it happened about a minute after he had delivered his dad's eulogy, over his father's casket. "You're shittin' me!" Mark responded, adding that it was "unfathomable" and had to be one of the ugliest things he's ever heard. ("I could tell you worse," Joe said, "but I won't.")

Then he got into the fact that he now has a new relationship with a hot woman (that would be Lisa). "We're doing things together, going back to Italy," he said. Of course that declaration was made a couple of months before COVID-19 put a damper on the happy couple's travel plans... and on everyone's plans, travel and otherwise, for that matter.

Apparently, experiencing these traumas helped drive home a point to Joe that even though we as individuals have an enormous amount of power in creating our lives, there's something bigger at work: an "objective reality" beyond the reality you create for yourself. He said that this was the one important point The Secret left out. Well, yes. In fact this is the very same painfully obvious point that many of us have been making for years and years and years, first in response to the new-age "you create your own reality" mantra and, later on, to the Secret-fueled law of attraction mindset. But we were called naysayers and haters for raining on the parades of the reality-creators and law-of-attractors.

In Joe's case, though, it seems particularly disingenuous to insinuate that the divorce trauma has been totally beyond his control. He is the one who -- again, according to public records -- initiated the whole thing. He made his bed... 

And that dramatic tale about Nerissa's alleged bad behavior at the elder Vitale's funeral? Given Joe's history of exaggerations, inconsistencies, and outright fibbing -- all of which, of course, make him no different from most selfish-help/McSpirituality hucksters and malignant narcissists -- I would approach that one with a healthy dose of skepticism if I were you. Until and unless I see confirmation from a third party who was actually there, I'll assume that this is just Joe being Joe, waxing histrionic in an attempt to wangle sympathy and support from his friends and fans (and perhaps from the judge who is presiding over the divorce proceedings). For various reasons he may be trying to build some sort of case that his "old partner" is being "abusive" and that he is the real victim. I'm not buying it.

Since that November 2019 conversation between Mark and Joe, both Joe and Lisa have continued to whine and snark, in increasingly blatant ways, about the "divorce from hell." In their narrative, they are the patient sufferers who are soldiering bravely on, dispensing their cosmic love and wisdom, despite the ongoing abuse from the third party in this unhappy triangle. Lisa has done some of her whining on Facebook, and some via her Instagram page. Meanwhile the two of them continue to market themselves as an enlightened power couple, or some such.

But it's hard for me to see their light through the thick sludge of astringent whine.

James Arthur "Death" Ray: convicted killer sure isn't killing it on the scumback trail
I've saved the worst for last. Katie and Mr. Fire may be serial hucksters and whiners, but at least they are not killers, at least not to my knowledge. I'll make this segment brief, because others have written much more powerfully about it than I can. But no post about Scamworld whiny babies would be complete without a nod to another star of The Secret, convicted killer James Arthur "Death" Ray.

Ray served less than two years in an Arizona state prison for the October 2009 deaths of three people -- Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- in a phony sweat lodge in Sedona. Ever since then, he has desperately been trying to reclaim his status as a Scamworld A-lister, and has not been afraid to incorporate whining into his marketing strategy. (Actually he began whining not long after he was arrested; for instance, he whined about being poor and not able to afford bail, and so forth. On the surface that's kind of an odd whine for a supposed "wealth guru" who marketed himself as rich and successful, but it's actually SOP for scoundrels who have been cornered in some way.)
 
Ray's promotional whining began in earnest after his release from prison, and it seems to be growing louder and angrier. Today I noticed for the first time a July 5, 2020 post on the public Facebook group page James Arthur Ray Is A Felon. The post was written by blogger LaVaughn Slaven, who has done a fine job of covering the Death Lodge debacle since the story first broke.

Ray's post-prison marketing has long been either tone deaf or deliberately twisted (my money's on the latter), but in recent months, it's taken a turn for the worse. He seems to be having some sort of meltdown. His "motivational" messages have gotten really angry and seem more like an excuse to vent his personal grudges. The weirdest part is that he seems to be really proud of these petulant rants disguised as advice and keeps putting them out across all of his platforms. In a recent set of postings, Ray set out to illustrate the common axiom "only hurt people hurt people," by whining about non-paying clients and how betrayed he was by friends who testified against him in the sweat lodge trial. It can be found on his Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as in this podcast on his site. Note that he keeps moving from the general ("you") to the specific (his personal gripes and grudges).

And later on in LaVaughn's post:

A post (also here) from about a month ago just made me gasp.

[Ray wrote;] Look, NO ONE knows suffering better than me.
You might know suffering as much as me, but there's NO WAY you know it better.

He killed people, but HE's the victim. Families lost their loved ones to the gruesome tragedy he caused, but they can't possibly be as good at suffering as he is. He's exceptional when it comes to suffering. The rest of us can only aspire to his mastery of the art of suffering.

Read the whole post, if you can stomach it. I am long past being surprised, but continue to be appalled, by the things Ray comes up with. These latest whines have left a particularly bad taste in my mouth.

* * * * *

I really am tired of all of this whining from scalawags and rapscallions whose own terrible choices got them into the situations in which they find themselves. It's always someone else's fault. As I've said before, the best thing you can do is to refuse to take their version of their sob stories, as well as their "success" stories, at face value. Scammers lie; that's what they do. And I guess we all need to accept the reality that as long as there's an audience, and potential money to be made, the whining, like the boasting, will go on and on.